EDITORIAL: Taking a bite out of crime in Cleveland

It wouldn’t exactly be classified as “solving the crime of the century,” but we think it is important nonetheless.

Three teenagers were arrested last week in Cleveland County and now face dozens of felony charges for breaking into multiple homes throughout the county.

In all, the three teens — ages 18, 18 and 19 — broke into nine homes in our county, stealing televisions, jewelry, computers, and other items.

We commend the Cleveland County Sheriff’s Office, who were assisted by the Shelby Police Department, for making these arrests.

First, it’s nice to see these two organizations working together to solve crimes. There have been two many times when petty squabbling between law enforcement agencies have inhibited, rather than enhanced crime-fighting efforts. But with Sheriff Alan Norman and Chief Jeff Ledford at the helms of their respective department, that appears to be a thing of the past.

The main thing we want to laud about these arrests, however, is that they are the types of crimes on which our law enforcement should be focusing. There were REAL victims here — folks who lived on Chatfield Road in Shelby, White Avenue, Stony Point Road, West Cabaniss Road, Shelby Road in Lawndale and others.

They had REAL property taken. Their homes were violated.

We are concerned that crimes such as these too often take a back seat to drug crimes that often don’t have victims, just willing participants. Buyers and sellers of drugs — clearly a voluntary transaction — aren’t violating other people’s rights as part of that deal.

In these cases, however, there were clear violation of rights to property and privacy.

Law enforcement leaders have to make choices every day as to how to allocate resources. In this case, Sheriff Norman pointed out that it was real “shoe leather” police work that resulted in the crimes being solved. Our wish is that more resources would be devoted to solving these types of crimes, rather than a vain attempt at stopping the drug trade.

We also applaud the sheriff’s office for offering a service by which residents can record the serial numbers of the TVs, electronics or other valuables on the department’s web site so that stolen items that are recovered can be quickly matched to and returned to their owners.

Anything that puts the attention of law enforcement on crimes with clear victims is a positive move. We congratulate local law enforcement on these important arrests.

Crime of the century? Maybe not, but solving the “crime of the day” is still pretty darned good.